Today may be Super Bowl Sunday to most sports fans, but loyal tennis fans started the day watching the third and final day of Davis Cup action in San Diego.

Team USA came in to the weekend boasting an 11-7 record over the U. K. and having won the last four Davis Cup encounters between the two countries. In fact, the last time Great Britain defeated the United States was in 1935. And the last time they beat the Americans on U. S. soil was all the way back in 1903, in Boston.

No one expected that record to have any impact on the current tie, however. Great Britain’s Andy Murray is ranked 6th with two Grand Slam titles on his resume, and James Ward has a reputation for digging deeper when representing his country.

With its highest-ranked player, John Isner, still recovering from an Australian Open injury, Team USA was relying on the 49th-ranked Sam Querrey and Davis Cup novice Donald Young to play above their levels. Both Americans lost their singles matches on the first day. Young’s defeat at the hands of Andy Murray was entirely expected, but Sam Querrey’s stunning collapse against a player ranked outside the top 150 (Ward) was surprising.

The world’s best doubles team, Bob and Mike Bryan, kept America in the tie by winning their doubles match on Saturday. The brothers had two losses in 2013, so they were eager to break the streak and keep their team’s chances alive. “We’ve been waiting a long time to get another opportunity to get that bad taste out of our mouth,” Bob said. “We were kind of coming out of our shoes. Really itching to get on the court.”

Day 3: Murray d. Querrey 7-6(5), 6-7(3), 6-1, 6-3

Sunday’s first match featured the top players from each nation. Great Britain’s captain, Leon Smith, felt good about his team’s chances going in with a 2-1 lead. But he knows as well as everyone that anything can happen in a Davis Cup setting.

“I think Sam is still a dangerous opponent,” Smith said. “He’s got a fantastic serve. Big heart as well and pretty proud to play for his nation as well.”

After Friday’s match, though, Querrey’s chance of taking the tie to the fifth rubber seemed pretty slim. When Murray broke Querrey’s serve in the first game, the possibility of the Brit running away with the match hung in the air over Petco Park. But Querrey dug in by making inroads on Murray’s serve. The 53-minute first set was much more up and down than anticipated. Each player was broken twice before heading to a tiebreak. Some fans may have started their Super Bowl pre-partying a little early in the day, so seeing Sam try to stay with Andy got the crowd excited. Despite the charged atmosphere, Murray regained his focus in the tiebreak to take the first set 7-6 (5).

Querrey stayed positive and made another run in the 52-minute second set. Neither player could force a break of serve, leading to another tiebreak. This time Sam came out on top, evening the match at one set apiece and exhorting the crowd to get excited.

Murray shook off a poor tiebreak performance by breaking his opponent in the first and third games of the third set, racing out to a 4-0 lead. The Brit raised his first serve percentage from 61% in the first set and just 57% in the second to a solid 75%, and he won 83% of those first-serve points. Querrey managed to hold serve just once before Murray broke him again to take the set 6-1 in under half an hour. The American, after expending a lot of energy in the first two sets, seemed to be running low on fuel.

Even though Querrey started off the fourth set with a few break chances on Murray’s serve, he hit a couple of weak shots that allowed the Brit to stave him off. Early in the set, Sam seemed to have found his serve, but his first serve percentage dropped to 56% (compared to 81% for his opponent). Querrey fought off a match point at 2-5 and had two break points at 3-5, but Murray held him off and served out the match, giving Great Britain a 3-1 victory over Team USA.

The rooting interest of the fans on Sunday wasn’t entirely determined by patriotism. Some Americans were cheering for Murray over Querrey, even though many of them may have been rooting for Team USA overall. One woman was screaming “Let’s go ANDY” to match the “Let’s go Sam” being yelled by the people next to her, but she said she would have rooted for the American over any other player from Great Britain. “I pick and choose,” she said. “I’ve been following Andy’s career for a long time. Plus, I’m half-British!”

As far as support on the team benches, Great Britain easily trumped Team USA. The British players were quick to jump to their feet in support of their teammates on the court. The Americans, by contrast, didn’t offer much energy or excitement from the bench.

Although they hoped for a different outcome to the tie, the USTA can count the setting as a success this weekend. The idea to construct a temporary stadium in Petco Park seemed to have come out of left field—which is just where they ended up putting the 7,000 -person capacity stands. The execution was as breathtaking as the drawings promised: a beautiful red clay court in a baseball stadium framed by the downtown San Diego skyline.

Official attendance numbers for Friday and Saturday say the stadium was filled to 88% and 91%, respectively. Sunday’s crowd was thinner, of course. Tennis has a tough time competing with football on most days, but going up against the Super Bowl is an insurmountable challenge. Even so, the fans who did come out to watch were excited to be there, and San Diego served as an excellent host for the tie.

U. S. Captain Jim Courier and Sam Querrey came into the post-tie press conference in better moods than on Friday, perhaps because this time the loss was expected.

“He’s one of the best players in the world,” Querrey said about Murray. “I felt like he had to come up with some great shots today to beat me.”

Courier emphasized that he was proud of the way Sam played today and that the first set tiebreak could have gone either way. “We went out and we laid it on the line. We gave it our best effort all the way through,” he said. “He was a different player than he was on Friday… We got off to a rough start… I feel proud of how our team fought.”

Asked about how it felt to be part of the team that gave up the first loss to Great Britain in over 100 years, Courier jokingly shrugged off any comparison. “We certainly don’t feel a lot of kinship to the last team that lost to the Brits on American soil, since they’ve been dead a long time.”

The British team was pleased but laid-back about their victory. Captain Leon Smith described the locker room vibe as calm and low-key. Murray said that everyone was having fun, in part because winning builds confidence and team spirit.

As far as the match today, Murray felt the key to getting over losing the second-set tiebreak was changing his tactics. “I started making more first serves, served more into his body, slowed down to give him less pace on my serve,” he said.

He was still surprised about the U. S. decision to play on clay, speculating that the motivation may have been to make the court slippery to take away his movement. “Obviously it did have a bearing on the tie, for Sam especially,” Andy explained. “I think his best surface is hard courts… maybe evened his match with James a bit.”

Andy finished by saying that he enjoyed his first visit to San Diego. “It’s somewhere I would like to come back and visit,” he remarked. “That’s not always the case when we travel around the world.”

Next up for Great Britain is Italy in April. The winner of that tie will face either Kazakhstan or Switzerland.